A SCHOOL netball team of 12 and 13-year-old girls has been disqualified from a local tournament because two of them were not wearing regulation skirts.

The decision caused outcry from the players and their parents who have described it as 'pettiness gone mad'.

The team, from Parrs Wood, got through to the semi-final and had a good chance of winning the competition but after securing a convincing 6-0 victory against Abraham Moss High School, their PE teacher had to break the bad news to them.

Team member Lizzie Walmsley, 13, said: "She told us that the team had been disqualified from the whole tournament. We'd been training for a long time for it and we were really pleased that we had got through so far.

"And then for them to turn round and say that, well, we were all gutted."

Lizzie, from Sandileigh Avenue in Withington, explained that the Abraham Moss side had protested after they had been beaten in the match.

She said the problem was that the Parrs Wood team, who had been running a bit late, had to get ready and on the court quickly and two of them ended up wearing dark coloured shorts rather than the uniform pleated skirts.

Lizzie said: "The shorts weren't brightly coloured with polka dots or anything. But it was a school netball tournament - it is just supposed to be fun."

The team of seven girls had been meeting every week to train for the tournament and their practise had paid off as they were doing well.

Lizzie added: "We don't know if we would have got through to the finals but it would have been nice to have had the chance."

Her dad, Robert Gutfreund-Walmsley, 64, was enraged by the decision. He said: "I think it's absolutely ridiculous. "These teachers are supposed to be so stressed out and over-worked, with all this pressure on them to worry about targets, bullying, discipline and national curriculum but the only thing they can find time to worry about is whether the kids are wearing regulation skirts.